Entrepreneurship and Strategy in Emerging Economies

Abstract

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. The world is undergoing a rapid economic shift as firms in the long dominant economies of Europe and North America are increasingly being challenged by firms from emerging economies, firms from low-income, high-growth nations principally are principally reliant on economic liberalization for their growth (Hoskisson, et al., 2000;Wright et al., 2005; Bruton, Ahlstrom, & Li, 2008). The growth of emerging economies is such that the World Bank's chief economist predicts that six emerging economies (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Russia) will account for half of the world's economic growth by 2025 (Lin, 2011). Yet, despite the importance of emerging economies to the world's economy, scholars too often fail to recognize that emerging economies challenge theories developed to explain phenomena in mature economies, which are relatively stable and efficient (Bruton, Ahlstrom, Obloj, 2008;Xu & Meyer, 2013). As a result, scholarship on emerging economies remains limited. This special issue, and this introductory article, will help to fill this gap in the literature as scholars consider entrepreneurship in emerging economies. Permanent repository linkThe limited research on emerging economies in strategic entrepreneurship is in many ways not surprising since strategic entrepreneurship research in general remains context free.Scholars are beginning to fill out strategic entrepreneurship's boundary conditions, especially in relation to family firms (i.e., Lumpkin, Steier and Wright, 2011). Yet, emerging economies remain outside of the typical focus of entrepreneurship scholars who still concentrate disproportionately on firms in the mature economies of Europe and North America. Indeed, we know from the existing pool of research on strategic and entrepreneurial activities in emerging economies that firms in emerging economies have unique differences (Ahlstrom & Bruton, 2006). Thus, scholars need to study entrepreneurship in its varied 4 contexts as the insights gathered from developed economies may be inappropriate for emerging economies (Zahra and Wright, 2011).In this introductory article, we initially build a model to understand strategic entrepreneurship in emerging economies. This framework draws from both the entrepreneurship and strategy processes that occur in this specific context (e.g., Hitt et al., 2011). We then use this framework to develop a future research agenda for strategic entrepreneurship in emerging economies. Finally, we review the articles in this special issue and how they help to address the future research questions we raise. We selected the papers in this special issue from 82 initial submissions to the call for scholarly work that (1) would build knowledge about the about the nature, antecedents, and consequences of strategic and entrepreneurial activities in emerging economies and that (2) would help to develop a theoretical foundation for future research. To ...

Contextualization and the advancement of entrepreneurship research

“…Instead, it serves as a means of crystalizing the effect of other factors. For instance, several researchers have studied the entrepreneurial activities of emerging countries and how they have been able to overcome the limitations of their location and the distance that separates them from global markets (for a review, Zahra, Abdel-Gawad and Tsang, 2011; Bruton et al, 2013). Brazil, for instance, has witnessed a rise in entrepreneurial activities when it took steps to reconnect itself with the rest of the world.…”

Entrepreneurial orientation in the emerging Russian regulatory context: the criticality of interpersonal relationships

“…Russia has developed a significant 'shadow economy' that has historically offered alternatives to dealing with more formal institutions. However, accompanying corruption and weak legal institutions has the potential to result in an unproductive 'dark side' of entrepreneurship which forces out productive entrepreneurship and impedes economic development (Bruton et al, 2013). Thus, Russia provides an interesting setting in which to explore the influence of several important regulatory factors upon the manifestation of EO within an emerging economic context.…”

Entrepreneurial Orientation in Different Environmental Settings: a Comparative Cross-Country Study

“…Second, we assess the validity of the EO measure, developed by Covin and Slevin (1989), in different contexts. As many theories developed in mature markets are challenged when applied to emerging economies (Bruton et al, 2013), this research found evidence of two dimensions of innovativeness/proactiveness and risk-taking in the Russian context. Thus we could argue that in the emerging market data, EO is not a unidimentional latent variable, but rather multidimensional with innovativeness/proactiveness and risk-taking as distinct orbits of potential influence on firm performance.…”